


Corsair

by ninamazing



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-08
Updated: 2006-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 12:18:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninamazing/pseuds/ninamazing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>It was the same dance, and no matter how old it got they clung to the steps like lifelines, because if one toe got out of place the music and the rhythm would spin out of control and there would be nothing left of normalcy.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Corsair

**Author's Note:**

> Here I am assuming that everything in _Serenity_ 's shooting script and/or deleted scenes actually happened. Because it's fun.

In his mind he was doubled over, gasping, cringing, with every muscle in his body screwed up in pain. He'd had plenty of wounds since his first barnyard tussle on Shadow, but none like this. Inner turmoil or not, he'd always been confident he could go on living -- but in that backup generator room with that Alliance butcher, he'd thought it meant the end. It would have been a good end.

"Mal?"

"Inara." His head snapped up, his pain not forgotten but simply doubled, his hand still on the shadow left by the Operative's sword. His Ambassador always seemed to appear next to him when he wasn't looking.

"I -- just --" Inara let her words falter, for once, her eyes dropping to the scar on his lower chest. Sheydra's words tiptoed unbidden through her mind. _In one of the stories you make love in a burning temple. I think that's my favorite._ Inara had thought, _Mine, too,_ and then something invisible kicked her in the stomach and she stared out at the sunlight in the mountains and wondered why it didn't make her happy anymore.

Mal stared at her a bit, too flummoxed by her stammers to respond. For a long, beautiful moment, neither of them had anything to say.

"I -- just wondered how you were doing," Inara revealed finally.

Right. Meaning, Mal knew, how long she'd have to wait before she could get out of his insulting and low affairs and back to a life of gilded lies. It was the same dance, and no matter how old it got they clung to the steps like lifelines, because if one toe got out of place the music and the rhythm would spin out of control and there would be nothing left of normalcy.

Inara used to amuse herself sometimes trying to imagine how her clients would act during sex, before they had it. You could tell a lot about a man who hired a Companion in the first place, and still more by the way he put his hands on her or what he whispered that no one else should hear. The boys, she was sure, would be all the same; they would talk too much and know even less. The older men each had curious indiscretions that she found either endearing or abhorrent by turns. Men between those ages would try not to let on how much she showed them, but she knew that for a night they had relaxed in her company and told her things they'd never say again. They were ninnies, for all the guns they carried.

The one man she couldn't figure out was Mal. She might never -- but she stopped herself before coming to that realization. Sometimes with her eyes closed and no one to see her she wondered: would he reach for her desperately, never sensing enough? Perhaps he would force her down and insist on his ways, or simply lie back and let her do everything, give her the absolute power she always pretended she wanted.

Inara hoped he wouldn't. She had long held a vision of sex for pleasure that stayed locked away in a secret place behind her eyes. _Control, control,_ her waking mind would urge her, but inside her imagination someone who loved her very deeply was touching her with more reverence than all of her most backwater clients combined. She didn't know or care what he looked like, because she knew he didn't exist. _Control._

Mal was just about to tell her he was fine, or make a nasty comment, when that wound meant he wouldn't laugh again for several months without some pain. Mal, she thought for the first time, had reserves of control better than any in House Priestess, if he wanted.

"It's, ah --" He grimaced, and leaned against the back of the common room couch. Mal looked up and met her eyes, with a trace of a smile.

"I got stabbed," he informed her.

Something happened when he lifted up his shirt to show her, and she touched the scar and he cried out and blushed, and she frowned, because her lightest of feathery touches had hurt him and she could no longer apologize, after having lost every semblance of etiquette to the chaos of her mind, but he turned his head and his face got too close and they were both _glaring_ at each other but somehow they were kissing, too, hungry honest kissing that wouldn't look like much to anyone spying but meant the world to the lovely man and woman on the couch.

"Mal," she whimpered, surprised to find that she was crying, awestruck to find that he was too.

"Mal" again, and she couldn't find the words yet so he kissed her some more until she could, and Mal was thinking _take it now, take this moment and grab it and keep every second of it for later, because in a second she'll be gone again and I won't rightly be sure if she was ever here at all, except for the shadow on my lips and the dust on my scar._

"I don't look down on you," she started finally, cheek pressed against his and whispering in his ear so he couldn't see her. "You've been the worst kind of bastard and you're the most irritating person I've ever met, but no man has held my attention for a minute and you've kept all of my mind for a year."

"If I were awake," he confessed to her after a deadly second, "I'd be able to remember all the ten-dozen ills I ought to be sorry for. But my head's all -- it's blurry, and you --"

Inara didn't seem to want to hear the rest; they were kissing again, hands in hair and tongues just beginning to explore. Mal wondered that after all his conjuring, he'd never seen her kiss, and was this the way she normally did it, all pawing and mewing and alive? If this was free, he wondered what it would be like in the fifty-credit package --

" _Qing wa cao de liu mang,_ Mal, I'm showing you I love you, not giving you a complimentary demo," she snapped. Mal didn't even puzzle that she knew what he was thinking; he merely took it as an invitation to start in on her neck.


End file.
